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Evolutionary psychology is a development from sociobiology, which assumes that behavioural differences between men and women of multiple kinds are adaptive for survival and have been selected in a process of evolution. The work of sociobiologists suggested that our genes programme our behaviour. Genetic similarities, which had been taken to explain physical similarities among relatives and to explain the recurrence of certain illnesses in families, are viewed in a much more problematic way to be the basis of complex behavioural traits such as ‘shyness, alcoholism or criminality’ (Fausto-Sterling 1992: 62) and, crucially for our purposes, behavioural differences between men and women. Sociobiology assumed sexual differences have evolved through natural selection to the maximal advantages of both sexes. It is important to be clear exactly what this programme requires – namely, that patterns of behaviour, supposedly empirically observed now, are of adaptive value.

Ideally, to show that a behaviour is an evolutionary adaptation, researchers must demonstrate that (1) the behaviour is heritable, (2) there is or was behavioural variability among individuals in a population, and (3) that differential reproduction, caused by the presence of the behaviour in question, led to an increase in the frequency of individuals tending to exhibit that behaviour in a population. Since researchers cannot go back in time to directly observe the evolution of current behaviours, they most often rely on indirect evidence. (Fehr 2011)

This has the consequence that hypotheses are invented for the supposed adaptive advantage of currently observed patterns of behaviour at some supposed earlier time in our evolutionary history. As many biologists, feminist and otherwise, have pointed out, this amounts to little more than the invention of Just So stories.

For example, Thornhill and Palmer in their book, A Natural History of Rape (2000), argue that rape is either a by-product of male adaptations to desire multiple sexual partners, or an evolutionary adaptation itself. In the adaptation view, rape is a facultative reproductive strategy, meaning that rape is the result of natural selection favouring men who commit rape when its evolutionary benefits in terms of producing offspring outweigh its evolutionary costs. (Ibid.)

There has been significant criticism of such stories (Travis 2003). For example, Elisabeth Lloyd (2003) highlights not only the complete lack of evidence that rape is of adaptive value but also the assumption that rape has a unitary meaning across historical times and cultures.

At the more general level, there is scepticism that complex social behaviour could simply be programmed in. This is especially the case since the patterns of behaviour that would maximize the chances of genes surviving are highly contextual. They depend on the environment in which the organism is placed, and in the case of human societies there is simply no continuity of environment. Moreover, it has been argued that such pictures misunderstand the way in which genes work: ‘a proper understanding of brain development suggests that while genetic information plays a key role in the unfolding of many details of the brain’s structure, extensive development of nervous connections occurs after birth, influenced profoundly by individual experience’ (Fausto-Sterling 1992: 77); ‘complex traits arise not simply (from genetic information) but also from the intrusion from the external environment and chance variations in development’ (ibid.: 88). We will return to this point. But what seems clear is that it is just not possible simply to read off complex patterns of behaviour from genetic modifications.

In the developments which evolutionary psychologists have made to sociobiological theories, psychological mechanisms are added into the picture. Human behaviours are not directly selected but, rather, are the product of psychological mechanisms that were selected. These mechanisms are ‘hardwired’ into the brain. This, if anything, has simply widened the range of behaviour for which evolutionary explanations are offered. Behaviours which did not exist in prehistoric times can now be explained as the outcome of a mechanism that was selected at that earlier point. So, we find bizarre examples. In the 2007 Journal of Social Psychology Peter Jonason argues: ‘Researchers have found that men and women pursue sex-appropriate strategies to attract mates. On the basis of intrasexual competition, men should be more likely to enact behaviours to look larger, whereas women should be more likely to enact behaviours to look smaller.’ (We might ask why, but he does not.) This, he claims, explains why, on undertaking exercise regimes, ‘male participants focus their energy on gaining muscle mass and enhancing their upper body definition, whereas female participants focused their energy on losing weight with emphasis on their lower body’ (Jonason 2007: 12). Here the Just So element of the suggestion seems evident. As Deborah Cameron remarks regarding many of the claims of this sort: ‘the only evidence for historic sex differences is the modern sex differences it is meant to explain’ (Cameron 2007: 112).

Such evolutionary stories, stories attempting to ground social behaviour in mechanisms of adaptive development, are supposedly reinforced by animal studies showing that male/female differences are found in non-human societies in ways that supposedly parallel those found in human ones. One study (Alexander and Hines 2002) that has gained much attention was one where toys which we might think of as ‘male’ and ‘female’ (trucks, cooking pans, dolls, stuffed animals) were given to vervet monkeys, and, it was argued, differences between preferences of human boys and girls were also found in the preferences of the male and female monkeys. This, it was suggested, indicated that these preferences were anchored in brain mechanisms which were shared across species. This study was repeated six years later with rhesus monkeys, with some similar and some different results. In Fine’s summary: ‘male and female monkeys alike enjoy playing with both stuffed toys and mobile objects, but in males the cuddly dolls appealed a little less’ (Fine 2012: 125). What are we to make of these studies? They are methodologically problematic in terms of the numbers involved, the possibility of apparently significant variation being a consequence of the set-up of the study and the absence of sufficient attention to other important variables. But, even leaving these on one side, it is quite unclear what conclusions can be drawn because we have no idea what the objects meant to the monkeys. The apparent preference of female vervets for cooking pans, for example, takes place in a context in which they cannot have a meaning anything like that which they have for female children. Moreover, primatology shows that the behaviour of monkeys diverges between male and female as they get older, particularly in relation to behaviour towards infants, but also that much of this behaviour is learnt. It is something they are initiated into by older monkeys. Also it is variable: ‘a male macaque monkey in Takasakiyama, Japan, becomes an involved carer while his counterpart in Katuyama perfects paternal indifference’ (ibid.: 127). It is this broader picture which the studies cited seem to ignore. More generally, there has been debate about the ways in which animal groups are looked at through the structuring lens of human society and the supposed discoveries then used to justify as natural the very social order from which they began. Moreover, animal studies have thrown up much more fluid variations of sexual difference and sexuality than are recognized by those who appeal to them to justify normative patterns in human societies (Roughgarden 2004). There is a great diversity in forms in nature: ‘in species ranging from fruit flies to lizards and primates she [Roughgarden] finds behaviours that include multiple sexes, sexual switching between male and female, same-sex sexual play and much else besides’ (Rose 2004).